


on thin ice

by snagov



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Coda: s1e5, First Time, Frottage, Love Confessions, M/M, Tension, Unreliable Narrator, no beta we sink like ships, pushed against a wall, this is the moodiest pwp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:40:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24062986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: Three weeks after Captain Francis Crozier goes cold turkey, he finds himself coming apart in capable hands.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 24
Kudos: 111





	on thin ice

_December 1847_

  
  


The sun doesn't rise here. 

The ends of the earth can do strange things to a man. Francis stares at the shadows running along the floorboards beneath his feet. There is a surplus of shadows here. The sun rarely rises. These days, deep in December, it doesn't rise at all. What can you count on when there is no light? No rise, no fall? There is nothing but wind and the burning brush of frostbite.

The pack-ice had not thawed last summer. Captain Francis Crozier doubts it will thaw this coming summer. 

Why did he come? He had sworn off the cold forever after returning from the Antarctic, warming his bones by the fire and his blood by a bottle of whiskey. But the ends of the earth do strange things to a man. He'd watched the cycles of day and night pass, the rituals of coming and going, and had started to find them increasingly to seem unreal. There is a world out there, strange and brutal, smashed apart upon ice and rock. The rituals of London were nothing but an odd fever dream. It had choked him. He rubs his knuckles, trying to work the cold out from his bones, staring into the flicker of a candle. 

He had not volunteered for this. Not like the others. Not by walking up and putting his name into a hat. But hadn't he reached for an impossible dream, a woman he could not have, a life he was not suited to, and shaped his world in just the way to send him back out again upon the ice?

He breathes in. To go up, to go outside into the bleak endless night and the ceaseless snow would be suicide. Still, there's a call that thrums somewhere within him. A drum. A bell. A melody. Something calls his name out over the packed ice and permafrost, telling him that if he is not suited for this world, to walk away entirely. 

James watches him, his eyes dark with concern. 

"This isn't what I wanted."

"This isn't what _any of us_ wanted," Francis bites. "But … it is what we signed up for."

James nods. Francis' fingers ache, wanting for something to wrap around. A glass of whiskey, of water, the barrel of a gun, a breathless throat choked off. Anything. But there is nothing here but air and ice. Sometimes, only the ice. 

"We should have listened to you."

Francis laughs a dry laugh. "Doesn't matter."

"Francis - "

"It _doesn't matter_."

James' jaw clenches. Tension weaves through his neck, the set of his stance. Francis tries not to look at the shape of James' capable shoulders, the tuck of his coat against his spare frame. 

It has been so long since he has been touched.

"How are you feeling?" James' voice carries concern on the back of it. Francis closes his eyes, trying to ignore the sound of worry. He remembers the look on James' face three weeks ago, heavy with stone-silent worry as Francis had shoved bottle after bottle into his company's arms, emptying his cupboards of every rotten drop. 

"Fine." 

"You don't look it."

"Oh well, thank you kindly then. Piss off."

"I mean it. Francis, we're supposed to be looking after you."

"I'll tell ya when I need lookin' after." 

"You already did. _Three weeks ago_ ," James hisses, pausing in his pacing to stare at Francis. "And until you're back up on deck in full uniform, we'll keep looking after you."

Francis' skin feels hot. Sweat on his brow, down his spine. Perhaps the cold has come too deep into his tissues and built a home in his marrow. Hypothermia can trick the mind and the body alike. You can feel warm even while freezing to death. Perhaps he is freezing to death. Perhaps he is dead already. Sometimes it is so hard to tell. He wants to reach out and grip ahold of something, to scrape his skin against anything, to try to learn if this is real or another hallucination brought on by his bitter detox. 

It has been three weeks. He doesn't know if down is up or black is white. Where are the boundaries of the earth?

"This is _my_ ship." Francis jumps up from the bed, pushing forward and snarling at James. He stops a scarce few inches apart, close enough to kiss or to kill. "This is my command and _you'll_ \- "

James' lip curls further. The wide shoulders twitch. With a sudden movement, Francis finds himself against a wall, his back pushing hard into the timbers. "No," James growls. "Not right now it isn't. Until you're fit for command, it's my ship and you're my crew and you will stay here and you will rest and you will _follow orders_." 

A second passes. Ten. Thirty seconds pass. Francis feels his chest heave without his permission. He knows his eyes are wide and his cheeks are red. He furrows his brows, praying that it will look like fury. Pushed against a wall, his arms pinned by James' wide hands, his arousal is very furious indeed.

"Will I?" Francis asks. It's a dangerous game. James is looking at his mouth, his own lips parted. Eyes impossibly dark and unreadable. One wrong move is a hanging, every unnatural sailor knows the score. James' breath is warm on his skin. Francis watches him, too still and too silent in James' grip. Up here, in the dark and the ice, it is impossible to tell what is real and what is a mirage. His dick is tight and red in his pants, hot between his thighs. Francis keeps watching that mouth, desperate to sink inside.

He pays it no mind. He is a soldier, after all, and there are orders. 

James is still watching him. _You would never look at me like that. You would never want me like this. This is a dream. This is my mind spinning out on black ice. Perhaps I'm dying. The cold kept pouring in and we couldn't bail it out. The cold kept creeping in, seizing our hearts, playing tricks on our glaciated minds._

If nothing here is real, he may as well do as he likes. 

"Dammit, what are you - "

 _Peace, I'll stop your mouth._ Someone has kissed the other. Francis doesn't know who moved first, doesn't know and will never know. That breath is his now. Francis kisses and inhales the warmth of James' skin. A man dying of hypothermia might paradoxically find that he is too warm and strip away his clothes. _This isn’t real, none of this is real. You’re nothing but my mind playing tricks._

“Lock the door,” Francis says.

James nods and does. Francis reaches for him with a hand that might not be real. James takes it, equally strange. 

Why do you come to the end of the world? Why do you reach for spaces beyond the map, where no one sets the score? Have you ever fit into place back home without sanding yourself down? It's a tight squeeze, fitting in. There's so much space up here. In the white ice, the black night. Out on the open sea. Nothing but space, nothing but time. Think of the wide-open sky, the heavy pressure of expanse. The promise is too much, leaning in over his shoulder. Why whittle yourself down to a lie? You can take up the anchor and stock the stores, sail for the Northwest Passage. Try to make it out of here. Run away. Take off. Get out of here. Let the gates of the city slam shut behind you.

Francis' hands shake, he's half-blind with want. His icepick fingers draw himself out of his trousers. _Touch me. Please, fuck. Let me touch you._

If this is death, it is a loving death. The cold takes him with a warm bed, with a naked chest pressed against his own. The ice isn't unrelentingly cruel. James' fingers trail down the swells of Francis' chest, over the ruddy blond of his stubbled beard. _I've always wanted you to want me like this._ Francis knows what he is. Fifty years old, corpse-pale and a stinking drunk. The skin of his face is pockmarked and tough, bitten by wind and salt. His nose is red. His chin is weak. Nothing to look at, nothing to love. The endless winter of the Northwest Passage gives him what he wants. He had come to the end of the world to live another life. And here it is, held in the palm of a phantom hand. 

"Kiss me again," he murmurs to the man haunting his bed. His palms are sweaty but James doesn't seem to mind. 

James kisses him. It feels so real. Francis hadn't expected a hallucination to feel so tangible. _What a gift._ He takes James' cock in hand. James moans quietly into his ear, grimacing into Francis' shoulder. 

"Who's in command again?" He whispers into James' dark hair. 

"I am," James says. 

Francis squeezes his cock. He feels the body against him tense with pleasure. Fingers curl around his arms, leaving mezzaluna marks from digging fingernails. 

"Not yet." 

"I think you're - "

"Shut up, Francis," James murmurs, pushing Francis back into the bed with a palm squarely in the center of his chest. His touch burns like a bush. 

_Look at you_ . Hair as dark as that bleak night, set against the bright lanterns. The shadows linger on his face, his neck, grace the side of his aquiline nose and sharp jaw. _I never meant to think of you like this. I hated you at first. Promise I did. A good, clean loathing. Appropriate. The way it was supposed to be. But it's been a long time, we've made a lot of mistakes. There's nothing here. No God and no country too. Not here, alone on the water. Why is it wrong to love you? I've forgotten. It's hard to remember out here. Here in the ice floes and the gales. Nothing is real but what you bring and even that is swallowed by the deep too._

The deep. The dark. The cold. Francis wants to laugh. What has he been afraid of? This is no terror at the end. James' hips push against him, rubbing against him. He arches into the touch. It's been so long, he's needed this so long. He'll come in the palm of James' hand and fall asleep here after, warm finally. He will die before he will wake, going gently into that good night. 

_Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?_

Once, he had been a boy. The eleventh of thirteen children. Ireland had felt too small, he'd boarded a ship as fast as he could and kept to the water as much as allowed. Where can the water take you? To the Cape of Good Hope. To Pitcairn Island. To the uncharted Antarctic, where he had named the waters and mountains. It had been this same ship, the H.M.S. Terror, that had brought him there. Now, he has come to the other end of the earth, still in Terror. 

"I didn't think you wanted - " James gasps. 

"I want." 

They rut against each other, naked and damned. Pleasure spikes brightly around his crown. When he comes, the ice-white light climbs the steps of his spine and detonates behind his eyes. Ruin comes for him and he comes in its hands. James gives a silent shout and shatters apart above him, clenched between his thighs and nestled in his hips. He shivers and shudders and his bones rattle in that beautiful skin.

As James lays against him, forehead against Francis' damp neck, Francis brushes his hair back and presses a kiss to his brow. Silence presses in. It's a tight fit. Francis swallows, trying to make room for himself and his self-doubt too. _It doesn't matter. This isn't real. You can say anything. Do anything. Doesn't matter._

"I wonder how long it will be till the searchers come." 

"Jesus _Christ,_ Francis."

Francis shrugs. "This place wants us dead," he murmurs. Something he's said before. It's something he's always known. Every sailor accepts that the sea doesn't always bring you home. Sometimes she keeps you. Brings you down to a grave built by no man. 

"So you've said."

Francis looks at James. He touches a lock of the black hair, turning it over in his fingers. He doesn't regret his own despair. Only this, that the crew might follow him in after. That James might be buried with him, somewhere below the surface. An iceberg as a gravestone. 

"I love you, you know," Francis says. 

James looks at him and doesn't blink. His mouth parts and breathing comes heavy. Francis watches how James' eyes dart around his face, trying to make sense of the words and the look of him. Trying to make sense of anything at all. 

"We'll get through this." James reaches for his hand. He brings the rough knuckles up and kisses them. Warmth again. His bones thaw further. He wonders how deep the cold has gotten to him already. He wonders what bones of his will be found. If they will ever be found. Perhaps nothing but petrified timber and shell casings. Tin cans soldered with lead. A rusted anchor. The graves on Beechey Island. Explorers will find them, he is sure. But it doesn't matter, he is warm now and does not mind not being found. 

James weaves their fingers together. His skin is younger, smoother. There had been a time when the look of James Fitzjames had turned Francis' stomach, sick with dislike for the younger sailor. Strange how desperate times might change things. So many nights threaded on whiskey and port wine, spilling secrets they had never meant to tell. James holds Francis' hand in his own and Francis knows there are other things held there. The secret of James' bastard birth. The truth of Francis' failed proposal. They know too much of each other. In such candor, you can only hate the other or fall in love. 

It's an illusion anyway. You might as well confess to the ghost at your side. The dead keep your secrets and up here, on thin ice, there's no one for them to tell. 

His head falls deeper into the pillow, rolling against James' own. He breathes in and there's the scent of the other. Of skin and sweat, wool and salt. Sea and sky. He has always belonged to the cold and the cold takes him in loving arms. 

"You'll be back up on deck soon," James murmurs. "You're nearly through it. I'm - I'm proud of you, you know. Thought I'd have to pour the bottles out myself." 

Francis gives a dry laugh. "No."

He closes his eyes, heavy with sleep. 

"I love you," whispers the voice next to him. He smiles into the skin against him, his daydream handing out everything his heart has wanted. He holds onto the hand in his own tightly, keeping it with him wherever he might go. He drifts off into sleep. 

* * *

What does a dream bring?

A bright white sky opens above. There is a zephyr wind picking up, catching the sails of the ship and skimming across the wide-open water. Francis stands at the helm. The sun is warm and golden upon his back. 

"Where to, Captain?" James' voice asks, resting a hand upon his shoulder. His smile is soft. 

He looks back at the sea. It glitters and calls, ringing like a bell to call all sailors home. 

"To the horizon," he says. "To the end of the Earth."

_And what we find there._


End file.
